Trioba - 24 hour race Plain, WA

2009 Trioba has come and gone just like that...wow. We were scouting the area near Lake Wenatchee for a 24 hour race in October of 2008 and a year later we were able to throw together a course that was challenging, had some good navigation and was a real challenge to physically get through.

Overall it is tough to be on the other side of the start line, or the race director's side. What's different? Way more stress, you want everything to turn out smoothly and there are sooo many things that can go wrong. You sleep less in the day before and day after the race...and most importantly as a racer who was directing I just wanted to get out there and bike , run and paddle with everyone.

The midnight start was a hit and guaranteed that everyone would have a night in the dark, and probably 2 nights in the dark. This is pretty cool and packs an expedition feel into a 24 hour race. After a short bike to Lake Wenatchee we sent teams out on a night time paddle. This looked easy but turned into a fun navigational test where teams worked up a slough and had to find a hidden lake. After this teams tackled a monstrous climb up to Maverick Saddle and then hit the single track.

Upon arriving at the remote TA teams left for a 7-12 hour trek that tested their nav skills and was a good challenge. From there teams would climb another 1K feet on the bikes and then start dropping into the screaming singletrack descent. B19 was an aided CP where bikers could drop their trekking gear, warm up and get back on the trail a little lighter. From here we had a lot of checkpoints that were meant to keep teams on the single track to the finish line if they wanted to complete the full course.

In hindsight this turned out to be the only issue/blunder with the race...the USGS maps were not real indicative of the trail's route (we were definitely aware of the maps inefficiencies but were banking on the reflective tape to clue in teams on the flags), our reflective tape failed and a couple of flag placements were on very subtle or redundant features. This proved to be a real challenge and dictated some changes in the placements...This was tough to swallow, we wanted to be perfect and a couple of issues with these CP's put a small damper on that. We will take a lot away from what is still a success for our first 24 hour race and can rest assured we will not have to deal with that issue in the future.

Overall good times, I look forward to another year of scouting...not sure where next year will take us, but we have a lot of good options! Thanks to all the volunteers for making the race a success and good job to everyone that toed the line!

You can get to race central on CPTracker HERE